The David Gillespie Blog

Imagine watching a loved one’s hands tremble uncontrollably, their steps falter… This heartbreaking reality confronts the families of over 200,000 Australians battling Parkinson’s disease. In Australia, someone is diagnosed with Parkinson’s every 27 minutes. These aren’t just numbers – they’re stolen futures. This isn’t a mysterious affliction, it’s a mass poisoning, and the culprits line the aisles of every supermarket. Today, April 11th, World Parkinson’s Day, isn’t just a day of awareness – it should be a day of defiance against the seed oils they’ve spent decades normalising.

Imagine your body as a battlefield. Every cell, every organ is under relentless attack by an invisible enemy called oxidative stress. This normal biochemical process is turbo charged by seed oils, and your brain’s command centre, the pars compacta, is a prime target.  The pars compacta is your body’s dopamine factory.  Think of dopamine as the fuel that powers smooth movement, thought, and  coordination. If the neurons responsible for producing dopamine are damaged, Parkinson’s disease is the result.

Our brains are incredibly resilient. We can lose around 50% of our dopamine-producing neurons before those first tremors appear. But once those neurons are gone, they’re gone forever. That’s why Parkinson’s is so insidious.  As the destruction  continues, even the best medications can only squeeze a little more dopamine out of those remaining neurons –  a temporary fix at best.   Before medication was introduced in the 1970s, a Parkinson’s patient was expected to live just 9.5 years after diagnosis. The drug-assisted life expectancy is now around 15 years. Still, Parkinson’s steals years, independence, and ultimately, lives.

Forget the myth of Parkinson’s as an inevitable consequence of ageing.  Researchers in Olmstead County, Minnesota meticulously tracked cases for decades, uncovering a shocking truth: new diagnoses nearly doubled between 1944 and 1984. And it hasn’t slowed down. A recent global study revealed a staggering 86% increase in Parkinson’s cases in the US alone over the past 30 years.

Even more alarming, Parkinson’s is striking younger people.  The incidence in the 45-49 age group has skyrocketed by 167% in the last three decades. This dramatic acceleration coincides perfectly with the rise of processed foods and the explosion of seed oil use.

The connection isn’t a coincidence. Populations who consume traditional, whole-food diets have far lower rates of Parkinson’s. In Italy, for example, the incidence has actually decreased over the last 30 years. The message is clear: Parkinson’s isn’t an inevitable fate. It’s a disease fueled by the modern diet.

The primary weapon in this assault is deceptively mundane: seed oils. Canola, sunflower, soybean… they sound harmless, almost healthy. But the reality is far darker. These oils overflow with unstable omega-6 fats, turning your cells into battlegrounds of oxidative stress. This relentless assault breeds a molecular toxin called 4-Hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) – a toxin that zeroes in on the dopamine-producing neurons that Parkinson’s systematically destroys.

This isn’t a fringe theory; it’s backed by disturbingly clear science. Yet the deafening silence from the health authorities and the Big Food corporations they protect makes them complicit in this crisis. The seed oil invasion has been nothing short of brilliant from a profit perspective.  These oils – think canola, sunflower, soybean – carry an undeserved aura of healthiness. This has helped them become the backbone of the processed food industry.  They’re endlessly malleable, incredibly cheap, and we can’t taste the difference, making us easy targets. This is how Big Food gets away with poisoning us for profit. They flood every aisle with products overflowing with hidden seed oils, fueling a wildfire of inflammation within our bodies.

You have the power to turn the tide, but it starts with brutal honesty. The neurons you’ve lost won’t magically return. But with every bite, you decide whether to keep feeding the enemy within. Every bag of chips, every restaurant meal where you don’t ask the hard questions about how the food is prepared, every “healthy” snack bar laced with seed oils – they are all acts of surrender.

Don’t. Eat. Seed Oils. This is your fight, your body, your future on the line.

The Battle Cry: No More Business as Usual

• Support independent farmers and small businesses committed to real, unprocessed food. Use your wallet to fuel a food revolution.
• Demand a change in Parkinson’s research – one that dares to examine the role of diet and seed oils in the disease.
• Hold Big Food accountable. Demand they remove seed oils from their products or face consumer boycotts. Push for clear labelling of all products containing seed oils, giving you back the power of choice.
• Spread the word. Educate yourself and those around you. Expose the truth they don’t want you to know.

Let’s make sure this World Parkinson’s Day isn’t just about awareness, but a declaration of war against a preventable disease.

Has there been a rise in younger people getting cancer? In short, yes. And it’s a terrifying reality that Princess Kate’s recent diagnosis tragically underscores. The news that someone seemingly vibrant and healthy is battling cancer at just 42 is a stark reminder that this disease doesn’t respect age, fame, or fortune. Sadly, her experience mirrors a disturbing trend.

We’ve become accustomed to thinking of cancer as a disease of old age, something to worry about if we’re lucky enough to reach our later years. But the latest statistics paint a deeply disturbing picture. For those aged 25-49, cancer rates aren’t just creeping up, they’ve exploded in just two decades. This translates into over 300 diagnoses a day in Australia alone. But even that number hides the true horrors:

• Kidney cancer: up by a mind-boggling 51%
• Uterine cancer: a devastating 45% increase
• Colorectal cancer: up by a shocking 42%
• Even breast cancer, heavily researched and discussed, is impacting younger people more often.

These aren’t random fluctuations. This is a full-blown crisis unfolding right in front of us, stealing away parents, partners, and friends who should have decades ahead of them. Princess Kate’s battle puts a human face on these grim numbers, reminding us that no one is immune.

Yet, the standard health advice feels tragically out of touch. Quitting smoking, reducing drinking, and managing weight are important, but they don’t address the elephant in the room. Why this explosion in younger people, even among those who seemingly do everything ‘right’? Could our modern food supply hold a devastating answer?

Here’s where things get chilling: a massive eight-year controlled trial found that men who replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils experienced a twofold increase in cancer deaths.  The study, considered the gold standard of medical evidence, assigned participants to either a standard diet or one where saturated fat was swapped for vegetable oils. While the vegetable oil group did have fewer heart-related deaths, overall mortality remained the same.  The shocking twist?  Cancers became the leading cause of death in the vegetable oil group, with nearly double the number of fatal diagnoses compared to the control group. Yet today, those same oils are pumped into nearly every processed food on the shelf. We’ve been sold a story that they’re “heart-healthy”, but a growing body of research suggests they might be anything but.

In fact, a recent re-analysis of decades-old data casts serious doubt on the very foundation of our modern dietary advice.   For years, we’ve been told that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils lowers cholesterol and saves lives.  But this study found the opposite:  lowering cholesterol did not reduce deaths from heart disease, and in some cases, might even increase the risk. If the very basis of the “healthy” push towards vegetable oils is flawed, it raises urgent questions about their long-term safety.

The processed food industry, focused on maximizing profit over our wellbeing, won’t give us easy answers. They’ve spent decades and billions vilifying natural fats while pushing cheap, chemically-altered oils as the solution. It’s a classic tactic: create the problem, then sell us the ‘cure’ that only exacerbates the issue. This isn’t a conspiracy theory – it’s the cynical reality of a food system designed to enrich corporations, not nourish the population.

Could this be more than a tragic coincidence? Could our obsession with ultra-processed, factory-made “food” be fueling this cancer epidemic? It’s a question we can no longer ignore. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and to the memory of those lost to this disease far too soon. It’s time to demand a radical shift – food that truly heals, policies that prioritize our health over corporate greed, and research that dares to challenge long-held assumptions about what ‘healthy’ means. Our lives literally depend on it.

Jewish grandmothers. Those benevolent despots with the power to guilt-trip a scorpion into submission. Their cooking? Weaponized love in the form of brisket and blintzes, all bound together with liberal lashings of glistening schmaltz. Schmaltz, the rendered essence of a chicken’s corpulence, is the liquid gold of Ashkenazi cuisine. But schmaltz was a compromise forced on the Ashkenazi. There were no olive trees in northern Europe. Butter, that unctuous nectar of the Gentiles, was strictly off-limits to anyone trying to keep kosher. Lard – well, that’s a hard no, folks. Then there’s rendered beef fat. Good luck finding a reliable supply of that in the shtetls of 12th century Poland.  So chicken fat it was.

But schmaltz, like any precious resource, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. And for the Jews who fled pogroms and poverty in Eastern Europe to the tenements of turn-of-the-century New York, those laws were positively draconian. Picture, if you will, a pious Yiddishe mama attempting to raise a brood of chickens in a cramped Brooklyn apartment. Imagine the clucking, the feathers, the stench of kosher poultry mingling with tenement squalor… It’s a scene out of Kafka on acid.

No chickens meant no schmaltz, and that meant a culinary crisis for the Ashkenazi. This culinary pickle is where the good folks at Procter & Gamble, purveyors of fine soaps and industrial lubricants, seized their moment. Those corporate Einsteins realised that their newly concocted Crisco– a greasy, white brick of cotten-seed oil – could play the part of ersatz schmaltz. It was odourless, shelf-stable, and more importantly, pareve (i.e., neither meat nor dairy, and thus kosher-friendly).

Crisco became the manna of the masses. Rabbis were recruited to bless it, Yiddish cookbooks sang its praises, and before you could say “Oy vey!”, Jewish households were frying, basting, and baking with industrial zeal. Crisco was the culinary equivalent of Esperanto – a neutral zone where tradition met convenience, where Old World tastebuds could assimilate into the American melting pot.

But fate, that fickle mistress, had other plans. While Ashkenazi Jews were deep-frying their latkes in Ohio, a seismic shift was taking place. Israel was born, and with it, a wave of Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean and North Africa crashed onto its shores. These sun-kissed Semites didn’t know schmaltz from schmutz. Their culinary tradition revolved around olives and their blessed oil, a world away from the pale ghettos of Europe.

And – bless their healthy hearts! – It seems that their seed oil free diet might hold the key to a rather puzzling paradox: why is testicular cancer so staggeringly common among Ashkenazi Jews, yet virtually unheard of among their Sephardic brethren? Scientists mumble about genetics and other such nonsense, but could the answer be staring us in the face? Could it be as simple as ersatz schmaltz vs. olive oil?

The irony, of course, is delicious. Just as Crisco solved one culinary dilemma for the Ashkenazi, it may have unwittingly created another far darker problem. It’s a lesson in unintended consequences, and a sobering reminder that even the most seemingly innocuous of dietary choices can have echoes down the generations.

In a world where our choices dictate our health, a silent epidemic has been brewing – one that has gone largely unnoticed. It’s a story of the hidden dangers lurking in the most unsuspecting places, where the heroes and villains are anything but clear-cut. This is the story of seed oils and the biochemistry that connects them to the nefarious world of smoking and alcohol.

At the heart of this tale are yeast – single-celled organisms that make up the fungus kingdom. These microscopic creatures have mastered the art of survival, thriving by producing ethanol, a toxic byproduct that eliminates their competition. Ethanol, the same ingredient found in hand sanitizers and disinfectants, is also present in rotting fruits and vegetables, and it fuels our alcoholic beverages.

As humans, we’ve evolved defense mechanisms to deal with ethanol, starting with ADH, an enzyme that converts ethanol into acetaldehyde – a substance 30 times more toxic. But why would our bodies make such a counterintuitive move? The answer lies in time. By turning ethanol into acetaldehyde, we buy ourselves precious moments to convert the toxic substance into harmless acetic acid.

This delicate dance between ethanol and acetaldehyde has consequences. When acetaldehyde lingers in our system, it brings hangovers, nausea, and more severe health issues. Some people, particularly those of Northeast Asian descent, possess a genetic mutation that makes them more susceptible to the dangers of acetaldehyde. This “Asian Flush” may deter alcoholism but puts them at a higher risk for liver damage, dementia, and cancer.

The villainous aldehydes don’t stop at acetaldehyde. Our bodies also encounter acrolein, a cancer-causing compound produced when plants burn, such as in cigarette smoke. And then there’s 4-HNE, a lethal aldehyde derived from omega-6 polyunsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds, and legumes.

In the past, our consumption of omega-6 fats was limited. But with the rise of seed oils in the 19th and 20th centuries, we now consume over ten times the ancestral amounts. These oils, marketed as heart-healthy and endorsed by dietitians, have infiltrated our food supply.

From margarine to mayonnaise and even restaurant fryers, seed oils are inescapable. Our bodies create 4-HNE from these oils, but we also consume it directly when we cook with them, inhaling and ingesting a double dose of the toxic compound.

Like its aldehyde cousins, 4-HNE wreaks havoc on our DNA and proteins, leading to an array of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and cancer. In a sinister twist, 4-HNE even undermines our genetic defenses against cancer.

While smoking and alcohol consumption are not marketed as healthy choices, seed oils have been cloaked in a veil of “heart-healthy” propaganda. The dangers of aldehydes produced by these oils far outweigh those from alcohol and smoking. The science behind this may be new, but it’s not so new that our health authorities should be unaware.

As this story unfolds, it’s clear that we can no longer afford to ignore the hidden dangers of seed oils. It’s time to reevaluate our relationship with these omnipresent substances and reconsider the choices we make in the name of health.

No-one would suggest smoking or drinking are good for us. But recently scientists have discovered the biochemistry of how they cause harm has a lot in common with seed oils. The difference is you get a choice about how and when you drink or smoke, but seed oils are now an inseparable component of the food supply and we are being actively encouraged to consume them.  Never before have so many been harmed by so few for so much money.

Yeast are single cell organisms which are part of the fungus kingdom. Like all organisms, their job is to win the replication game. Yeast win by killing the competition with their waste.  When they turn sugars into energy a by-product is ethanol, a substance which is lethal to most organisms. This is why it is a primary ingredient in Hand Sanitizer and disinfectants used to eliminate bacteria and viruses. Ethanol is also found in rotting fruit and vegetables and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.

Fruit is a naturally rich source of sugar, so as it rots, yeast produce more and more ethanol. Any animal that eats overripe or rotting fruit needs to have evolved a defence mechanism against poisonous ethanol.  In humans that defensive mechanism starts with ADH (Alcohol dehydrogenase), a group of enzymes which diffuse alcohol.

The ADH oxidizes ethanol into acetaldehyde, a Class 1 Carcinogen.  At first glance this is not the smartest thing to do.  Acetaldehyde is up to 30 times more toxic than ethanol. But we do it to buy time. The body diffuses an acutely toxic substance, ethanol, by turning it into a substance which while more toxic, takes longer to do harm. All being well, we use that extra time to oxidise the acetaldehyde to relatively harmless acetic acid (the primary ingredient in vinegar). We do that using ALDH (Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase) enzymes.

Acetaldehyde is the part of the process responsible for the consequences of alcohol abuse such as hangovers, nausea and ultimately liver damage and cancer. The longer it remains in our system, the worse and longer lasting those effects will be. We can however only process so much acetaldehyde at a time, so front loading the system by binge drinking means it stays with us for longer and does more harm.

For some people acetaldehyde can be even more dangerous. Up to 80% of people of Northeast Asian descent possess a mutation of ALDH which is less effective at diffusing Acetaldehyde.  This causes a condition nicknamed the “Asian Flush”. Their face goes red, they become nauseous, and their heart and respiration rates increase.  That reaction is sure to put you off the booze and the research shows people affected by Asian Flush are less likely to become alcoholics.

A similar logic is used with the drug Antabuse (disulfiram) which impairs ALDH, effectively causing Asian flush in people not otherwise affected.  It makes people less keen on drinking and is sold as a treatment for alcoholism.

The downside to Asian Flush and Antabuse induced Asian Flush is that it happens because it is slowing down the disposal of an extraordinarily toxic aldehyde. So while they are less likely to become alcoholics, these people are more likely to suffer the consequences of aldehyde exposure such as liver damage, dementia, and cancer.

Acetaldehyde is not the only aldehyde we are likely to encounter and it is not the only one that ALDH can deal with. It also diffuses Acrolein, one of the primary cancer-causing aldehydes created when plants are burned.  We are most likely to encounter acrolein in cigarette smoke but most smoke contains it. Even more importantly ALDH removes one of the most lethal carcinogenic aldehydes, 4-HNE.

4-Hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), first discovered in 1991, is created from omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Nuts, seeds and legumes and the meat of animals that eat those things are the primary sources of omega-6 fats in the ancestral human diet.  Just as with limited ancestral alcohol and smoke exposure, our ALDH system has evolved to deal with the relatively small amounts of 4-HNE created by eating those foods.

But the modern diet contains a vast new source of those fats which dwarfs ancestral quantities, seed oils.  The invention and introduction of mass produced, cheap seed oils during the 19^th and 20^th centuries has resulted in the average person increasing their consumption of omega-6 fats more than 10 fold, well beyond any evolutionary limit.

Seed oils are extracted from seeds (such as Canola/Rapeseed, Sunflower, Safflower, Grape, Corn, Almond, Cotton, Hemp and Sesame) or legumes (such as Soy and Peanuts).  They all have one thing in common – very high levels of omega-6 fat. They are marketed as heart healthy vegetable oils and have received Dietitians’ seal of approval. This is why, since the 1990’s almost everything on the supermarket shelves contains it. And why everything cooked in a fryer in a restaurant or a burger ‘restaurant’ or a fish and chip shop is fried in it (although Maccas resisted Heart Foundation pressure until 2004 and KFC held out until 2012). Even the humble take-away sandwich is swimming in the stuff.  It is in the margarine smeared on the canola filled bread and the primary ingredient of the mayonnaise or most other dressings.

Our body creates 4-HNE from the seed oils we eat.  But that isn’t the only source. We directly consume it as well.  4-HNE is produced when food containing seed oils is cooked.  If we are nearby when it is cooking, we will inhale it directly. And if we then eat that food we are, in effect, receiving a double dose.

Just like acetaldehyde and acrolein, 4-HNE is dangerous because, when it exceeds our ability to remove it, it reacts with DNA and proteins that are critical components of our cells.  Accumulate enough damaged DNA or proteins and those cells begin to malfunction or die.  This is why 4-HNE has (so far) been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, Stroke, Type II Diabetes, Liver disease and almost every form of cancer.  It is so diabolical that when created or consumed in excess, it even alters the parts of our DNA which defend us against cancer.  It not only causes the attack but also disables the defence.

Messaging around smoking and the consumption of alcohol is clear.  They are not sold as health foods.  And it is up to us to choose how much of these substances we are exposed to.  ‘Heart Healthy’ Vegetable (really seed) oils are significantly more dangerous and yet have been relentlessly promoted by our peak health bodies ensuring they are everywhere in our food chain

Aldehydes produced by drinking and smoking are dangerous, but they are insignificant compared to those produced by consuming ‘heart healthy’ oils. The science on this is new but it is not so new that those we trust with our health should not be aware of it.  And yet, they continue to behave like sales agents for the seed oil industry.  This must stop now.

The statistics tell us that every year more and more of us suffer from cancer.  The experts continue to tell us it is our fault for failing to listen to their sage advice. But with smoking and drinking at all-time lows and sun protection at levels never before seen in the history of life on earth, it’s time for the experts to admit that maybe, just maybe they have been horribly wrong.

This week the team at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute pumped out another of their tax payer funded three yearly updates on ‘modifiable’ risk factors for cancer.  After doing some mathematical acrobatics they calculate that if we just stopped doing risky things 38% of cancer deaths would be prevented.

The ‘risky things’ they are worried about are smoking, not eating enough fruit and vegetables, eating too much red meat, consuming too much alcohol, not exercising enough and spending too much time in the sun.

The only problem is that we have been doing all of that since at least the early eighties.  And over the intervening decades cancer incidences have been accelerating at a terrifying rate.

Between 1980 and 2012 we cut back on the booze – dropping our consumption by 21%. We also ate 15.4% more vegetables and 7.5% more fruit between 1992 and 2011.  And our consumption of beef has plummeted by half since the early eighties.

For good measure, we also increased the amount of exercise we did, with the proportion of us doing high levels of exercise almost doubling.  And our sun protection behaviours have improved significantly. Most importantly, we dramatically reduced smoking.  Adults who smoked daily almost halved between 1995 and 2015.

And our reward for doing exactly as we were told? The incidence of all cancers has increased by 23% and some cancers have really exploded.  Australians are now three times as likely to have thyroid or liver cancer and between 2 and 3 times as likely to have melanoma or Kidney, Anal, or prostate cancer.

We have done exactly what we were told and the result is the opposite of what the experts predicted.  And yet the advice from those experts is to do it harder.  On the evidence to date you could reasonably conclude doing what the experts tell us will likely increase the suffering from cancer.

We need these experts to take a harder look at what we know about the underlying causes of cancer and break from the career-preserving eat-more-veg-and-exercise-more tosh they have so far been dispensing.

In an environment when the solution you preach is not producing the result in you predict, then it is highly probably you are missing something.  Yes, smoking reductions have put downward pressure on lung cancer rates but it is also clear that something else is putting even more upward pressure on lung cancer and a long list of other cancers.

We know that smoking causes cancer because it releases large amount of toxic aldehydes into our system.  These drive a state of oxidative stress which cascades through to the DNA disruption which lies at the heart of cancer.

But we have known for decades that seed oils, the fats which now totally dominate our food supply, produce exactly the same disease cascades as smoking – only worse.

The science on this is the gold standard in nutrition research – a double-blind, randomized, controlled lengthy human trial. No correlations. No guessing about explanations. Just one dietary change which lead to just one powerful conclusion.

The trial was conducted in the late 1960s. It involved randomly allocating men to diets that contained animal fat (let’s call them the butter eaters) or diets where that fat was replaced with seed oils (the margarine eaters).

After eight years, the butter eaters had half the rate of death from cancer when compared to the margarine eaters. And that’s even though the butter eaters had a much higher proportion of heavy smokers. It’s that simple, use seed oils for fat and humans die much more frequently from cancer.

In Australia today it is impossible to buy processed food which uses animal fat. There is one simple reason for this. It’s cheaper. All our packaged food is infused with cheap seed oils rather than expensive animal fats and our consumption of those cancer causing oils has inexorably risen as a result.

Knowing this, the rise in cancer diagnosis, despite the huge reduction in smoking, is not a surprise. Rather it is the inevitable result of the profiteering ways of the processed food industry. And it will continue to rise for as long as we continue to consume these oils.

We know that ingesting seed oils or inhaling their vapours causes cancer with at least the same level of certainty as we have about smoking. And yet these same experts telling us to eat less red meat and more vegies actively encourage us to consume these lethal oils.

The sanctimonious preaching must stop. We don’t need yet another round of experts using our money to tell us cancer is our fault.  Cancer is not our fault. The science has told us for decades that it is caused by the very same seed oils that these experts tell us we should eat.  We need the high priests of nutrition science to immediately stop singing from the food industry song-sheet and provide evidence based advice about what really causes cancer.  If nothing changes, nothing will change.